Apparently, if you launch a website for women in 2009, the most important question is whether or not it's feminist. At least, that's what you'd think, judging by today's launch of the women-oriented website you're reading. Only, the funny thing is, I thought feminism was dead. I mean, didn't we kill it already?

At best, it seems odd to judge a 21st century production by the politics of a decades-old movement, the relevance of which has been dubious for years now. The sense I get reading Jezebel's dismissive, snippy critique, which seems to amount to "you're a bunch of old farts, blppph," or Tracy Clark-Flory's more considered missive is that the only way to judge a female-oriented site is by whether or not it's "feminist." What gives? Aren't we over that already? I could have sworn feminism was cultural road kill, at this point. And isn't it intellectually reductive and culturally retarded to imply that the only site for women worth doing is one that follows an abstract set of political rules upon which no one can agree? It seems to me that "feminist" sites like the aptly-named Feministe are interested in having it both ways. They want all the power their feminist foremothers promised them—and the right to play full-time victims of the patriarchy. Get over it. Get on with it. I hope the feminist mantle doesn't fit Double X. I hope this site is bigger than that. I want to be more than a victim of the patriarchy, go farther than the feminist movement ever did, spend less time reading about women who are wondering if their supposed sisters are doing "the right thing" in terms of antiquated political concepts, and get the hell on with doing it already.

Tags: double x, feminism, Jezebel

You know, screeds like Linda Hirshman's in Double X are why I waffle so much about identifying with the feminist label.

It isn't even that Linda Hirshman is using every ounce of her online persona to live up to the stereotype that plagues the second wave—you know, the one about older feminists being insensitive to issues of race, class or sexuality. It's more the willful misunderstanding of why discussions of feminist ideas have veered into deeply personal territory. Yes, we understand that abortion rights are important, and need to be preserved. But that statement doesn't speak to the reality of events like being on the abortion table for the second time and finding your ideals getting jumbled up with ideas of who you thought you were before you hopped up on that table.

Nor does Hirshman seem to pause and consider that the reason so many young women do not seek help from law enforcement when they are sexually assualted and/or raped is not that they don't consider it important but that the system, often—most recently in Texas—places the lion's share of the cost on the abused. Back when I wrote "The Not Rape Epidemic" for Yes Means Yes I made sure to note my thought process in not reporting my abuser—there was no physical evidence, there certainly were no witnesses, and it would quickly come down to my word against his. In a horrible twist of fate, I found out that my abuser had gone on to participate in the gang rape of another young woman—and while the brusies on the girl's face, the broken blood vessels in her eyes, the DNA evidence collected at the scene, and testimony from the other participants clearly told the story, the defense attorney still felt that he could initiate doubt by implying that this girl had in some way asked for it.

By willfully ignoring the circumstances in which we live, and the nuance with which Megan and Moe reveal their stories, Hirshman becomes complicit in the very misogyny that she purports to be against.

With fellow feminists like this, who needs the patriarchy?

Tags: Jezebel, Linda Hirshman, Rape, Yes Means Yes

Last Tuesday, in the debut of Double X, Linda Hirshman said that the bloggers at Jezebel need to accept that they may be raped if they’re going to insist on being such public sluts. (I'm paraphrasing here, but not as much as I wish I were.) Latoya Peterson responded by rightly pointing out that screeds like Hirshman's give feminism a bad name. The Internets erupted. And now, just what we needed, the Observer has swooped in to Explain It All to Us, clucking their editorial tongue about the whole "infighting" mess.

Missing from this entire kerfuffle is one crucial point. Women aren't raped because they're being sexual in public or private, and they're not raped because they're drunk. Women are raped because they're women.

Statistics vary, but we know that the vast majority of rapists aren't the men we randomly meet in bars one night—they're the ones we already know. The idea that women are more likely to be raped while they're being "bad" is a nasty myth created to keep women in our places. Rape has never been an act of sexual incontinence committed because we’re just too darn available and tempting, and being “smart” or “good” isn’t going to keep us safe.

Sure, men rape women in drunken party atmospheres. They also rape women on quiet nights in, but we get no warnings about the dangers of playing Trivial Pursuit in mixed company. Yes, rape risk increases when alcohol is involved, but if someone is drunk during a rape, it's more likely to have been the attacker than the victim. And yet where is the public service message warning men against the dangers of drinking and raping?

I'm not a big Jezebel defender on this subject, precisely because of the type of posts that Hirshman and the Observer point out. They excuse rapists' behavior and perpetuate the myth that if a woman was drinking or being sexual, she is in some way responsible for another person assaulting her. But Hirshman's complaints about Jezebel fall into the exact same—very dangerous—trap. If it's possible for women who are raped to deserve it as a "consequence of their own acts," as Hirshman says, then you can hardly blame the rapist for that act, now, can you?

This controversy isn't about "choice feminism"—dressing in skimpy clothing, drinking, and having casual sex aren't inherently feminist choices any more than wearing billowy skirts and Birkenstocks, drinking herbal tea, and being celibate are. But our approach to rape prevention is a feminist choice. We need to face the fact that focusing on the consequences of women’s actions instead of on the actions of rapists has done precious little to reduce the incidence of rape.

You know what else is a feminist choice? Refusing to do the work of the patriarchy. So if refusing to police my own sexuality and blaming rapists for rape in all circumstances makes me a slut, then I wear the name proudly.

Tags: Jezebel, Linda Hirshman, Rape